this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2026
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Yeah the best term that would fit would be peasant or serf but even that feels wrong. Problem is ancient Egypt existed so long ago that a lot of their social structures are a bit alien at this point to the average person, just because it was so damned early in history. Its basically like comparing the stem mammals to modern mammals, real close and lots of similarities but still quite different.
100% this, we wouldn't recognize the attitudes and social systems, so while it's true there was a lot of injustice and suffering in early history, (I can point anyone at mass graves with butchering marks on the bones if people really want to know how bad things were) it's not appropriate to try to use the building of the pyramids as an example of well, anything really. All we know is that the people were paid a kind of ration system, maybe more. Maybe it was more complicated than that, but they also weren't chained and whipped like we imagine slavery in other periods.
I think it makes people uncomfortable because we want to point to any kind of indentured servitude with moral absolutism. And big, giant stone monoliths are great things to point at to use as examples of human hubris. But most of the people who feel anything about it couldn't connect with social attitudes and cultural norms of the 1980's much less four-thousand-fucking-years ago.
The greatest words in science are "I don't know."
TL;DR Imperfect but fairish